Most children actively notice and think about race. A new study has found that children develop an awareness about racial stereotypes early, and that those biases can be damaging. The study, by researchers at Rush University and Yale University, appears in the November/December 2009 issue of the journal Child Development. This study looked at more than 120 elementary school children from an ethnic...

Why do so many animal species — including fish, birds and insects — display such rich diversity in coloration and other traits? In new research, Gregory Grether, UCLA professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, and Christopher Anderson, who recently earned his doctorate in Grether`s laboratory, offer an answer. At least since Charles Darwin, biologists have noticed that species diff...

Researchers at Georgia Tech have discovered that, contrary to previous assumptions, older adults are more amenable than younger ones to having a robot "perform critical monitoring tasks that would require little interaction between the robot and the human." The findings will be presented at the upcoming HFES 53rd Annual Meeting, Grand Hyatt, San Antonio, Texas, Thursday, October 22, 2009...

The fact that they eat a lot – and often – may explain why most people and other mammals are protected from the majority of fungal pathogens, according to research from Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University. The research, published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases, showed that the elevated body temperature of mammals – the familiar 98.6º F or 37º...

A knowledge gap exists in the area of climate research: for decades, scientists have been asking themselves whether, and to what extent man-made aerosols, that is, dust particles suspended in the atmosphere, enlarge the cloud cover and thus curb climate warming. Research has made little or no progress on this issue. Two scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg (MPI-M) an...

The use of digital data analysis within law enforcement is not simple. For example, how can you predict if somebody is a terrorist? Dutch researcher Stijn Vanderlooy has developed a model that makes digital data analysis more reliable. In recent years there has been a rapid increase in the storage of digital data within the field of law enforcement. However, this data must be analysed to extract k...

Scientists led a rat to the fatty food, but they couldn’t make it eat. Using an animal model of binge eating, University of Missouri researchers discovered that deactivating the basolateral amygdala, a brain region involved in regulating emotion, specifically blocked consumption of a fatty diet. Surprisingly, it had no effect on the rat wanting to look for the food repeatedly. “It appe...

Rats fed a high-fat diet show a stark reduction in their physical endurance and a decline in their cognitive ability after just nine days, a study by Oxford University researchers has shown. The research, funded by the British Heart Foundation and published in the FASEB Journal, may have implications not only for those eating lots of high-fat foods, but also athletes looking for the optimal diet f...

A team of French scientists have found the dose of DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) that is "just right" for preventing cardiovascular disease in healthy men. In a research report appearing in the September 2009 print issue of The FASEB Journal, the scientists show that a 200 mg dose of DHA per day is enough to affect biochemical markers that reliably predict cardiovascular problems, such as t...

With nothing to guide their way, people attempting to walk a straight course through unfamiliar territory really do end up walking in circles, according to a report published online on August 20th in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication. Although that belief has pervaded popular culture, there has been no scientific evidence to back it up until now, according to the researchers. "The sto...